Lin Zexu

Lin Zexu (30 August 1785-22 November 1850) was a Qing Chinese scholar and official whose hardline anti-drug policies led to the disastrous First Opium War. While the initially-supportive Daoguang Emperor criticized him for leading China into the first of two disastrous wars with Britain, the Chinese diaspora in New York City erected a statue to him in Kimlau Square to commemorate his moral high ground in the war on drugs.

Biography
Lin Zexu was born in Fuzhou, Houguan County, Fujian, Qing China in 1785, the son of a government official. In 1811, he passed the civil service examination and rose in the ranks of provincial service, eventually becoming Governor of Hunan and Hubei in 1837. He launched a successful campaign against the opium trade there, and, in 1838, he wrote an open letter to Queen Victoria, stating, "Let us ask, where is your conscience?" He argued that China was providing Britain with valuable commodities, while the British sent them "poison" (opium) in return, and he hoped that the Queen would be sympathetic to his cause. However, there was no reply, even after the London Times reprinted it as a direct appeal to the British public. In 1839, he arrested more than 1,700 Chinese opium dealers and confiscated over 70,000 opium pipes, and he forced foreign merchants to give up 2.6 million pounds of opium and destroyed it over the course of 23 days. In response, the British retaliated against the Qing government in the First Opium War, and Lin was scapegoated for the Chinese defeat and exiled to Xinjiang in 1840. He spent years studying the Muslims there before being rehabilitated in 1845, and he served as Governor of Shaanxi-Gansu in 1845 and Governor-General of Yunnan-Guizhou in 1847. He died in 1850 while on his way to help put down the Taiping Rebellion.